


Under Construction

by Robin Hood (kjack89)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Construction Worker Carisi, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 16:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12392094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/Robin%20Hood
Summary: “You have a problem,” Rita told him, her voice thick with disapproval.“I do not have a problem,” Barba shot back.“You're taking your lunch halfway across the city in the vain hope of perving on some poor, unsuspecting construction worker whom you previously made a fool of yourself in front of,” Rita pointed out. “In what world is thatnota problem?”Rita had a point.Barba hated when Rita had a point.





	Under Construction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tobeconspicuous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobeconspicuous/gifts).



> For my darling Maggie, who headcanoned this with me _ages_ ago and has been very patient while I've written a million unrelated things in the interim.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

Springtime in Manhattan meant the return of Barba’s least favorite season: construction season. Granted, as someone who generally left his apartment before the sun rose and returned long after it set, he was rarely all that bothered by the annual attempts to continue gentrifying his neighborhood, other than on principle alone.

But on a rare and exceedingly precious day off, Barba was awoken by the grating sound of a jackhammer that set his teeth on edge as he glared at the sun streaming through his window as if it had personally offended him. He got out of bed and shuffled over to the window to try to spot the obnoxious noise.

It wasn’t hard to find. The decrepit building next to his had been condemned for nearly six months before the city got around to demolishing it, and the empty lot had sat bare and ugly for six more months before someone, assumedly, decided to do something about it.

And with that decision came a crew of the usual loud and generally obnoxious construction workers. Barba could practically hear the discordant cacophony of working class New York accents even through his closed window.

He could also hear Rita Calhoun’s voice in his head telling him he was a snob.

Like Rita had a goddamned leg to stand on.

Regardless of Barba’s snobbiness, there would be no return to sleep for him, and since he had a stack of paperwork a foot deep that needed his attention, Barba figured he might as well treat himself to a coffee from the café around the corner.

He made the mistake of walking past the construction site on his way to the café.

He made the far greater mistake of glancing over at the workers.

His greatest mistake by far was letting his eyes linger on the tall one whose deep dimples were visible even with his face under the shadow of his hard hat.

Barba had always had a thing for dimples.

Even without the dimples, Barba would have been unable to deny that the man was gorgeous. And sure, maybe he was ten years too old to be ogling hot construction workers, especially construction workers who were almost assuredly straight, but Barba had eyes.

And they liked what they saw.

Barba stared a moment too long. Long enough for the construction worker to see him staring, his dimples deepening as he caught Barba’s eye. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except that Barba then walked directly into a streetlight.

For one moment, the attractive construction worker looked horrified, but when Barba straightened, clearly uninjured (his pride notwithstanding), the construction worker laughed so loudly that Barba could hear it over the sound of the still-running jackhammer, and Barba fled the scene as quickly as possible, his face roughly the color of a tomato.

When he got his coffee, he debated taking the long way back to his apartment just to avoid going back by the construction site.

He decided he was being stupid. He was a goddamn ADA, after all; he routinely stared down murderers and rapists without batting an eye. He could handle holding his head high as he marched past the construction site.

So he thought, anyway, though his step faltered slightly when he saw the dimpled construction worker sitting on the edge of a pickup truck bed, his grin widening when he saw Barba. “How’s your head?” the construction worker called in a thick Staten Island accent.

Barba flushed and stared determinedly ahead. “Fine,” he said shortly.

“Glad to hear it,” the construction worker continued, still grinning. “Wouldn't want you to do permanent damage to that handsome face.”

He winked, and Barba choked on an ill-timed sip of coffee. He hurried past without saying anything, his face burning again as the construction worker called after him, “See ya around!”

Well. Maybe. Though Barba certainly wasn't going to go out of his way to see him again.

* * *

 

“You have a problem,” Rita told him, her voice thick with disapproval.

“I do not have a problem,” Barba shot back.

“You're taking your lunch halfway across the city in the vain hope of perving on some poor, unsuspecting construction worker whom you previously made a fool of yourself in front of,” Rita pointed out. “In what world is that _not_ a problem?”

Rita had a point.

Barba hated when Rita had a point.

“I had to run back to my apartment for entirely unrelated reasons,” he said, tucking his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he accepted the coffee he had just ordered from the barista at the café near his apartment. “Admiring the scenery is just a convenient coincidence.”

Rita made a small, disbelieving noise. “And you suddenly no longer trust Carmen to run back to your apartment for you?”

Barba scowled and took a sip of coffee. “Carmen is currently fielding calls from the senior partners at _your_ law firm because _apparently_ , someone neglected to pass on the message that my office isn't interested in taking a deal on the Gordon case.”

“Oops.”

“I wouldn't sound so smug if I were you,” Barba said warningly, heading down the sidewalk towards his apartment building. “In fact—”

Barba broke off mid-sentence as he glanced over at the construction site, only to see the hot, dimpled construction worker from before leaning on a shovel, shirtless.

“Barba?” Rita asked, sounding worried. “Rafael, are you there?”

Barba hung up on her.

He took a careful sip of coffee, content to let his eyes linger on still too pale to be considered tan skin (matched all too well by a blindingly orange vest) over a surprisingly muscular frame, given how lithe the construction worker appeared, when the construction worker in question shifted and stretched with a yawn.

Barba couldn’t have looked away from the muscles rippling in the man’s chest even if he had wanted to.

And he really might’ve wanted to.

Since he almost instantly ran face-first into a low-hanging tree branch.

Barba blinked, his face stinging from the branch and his entire persona stinging from the indignity of coffee soaking through the three layers of his finest gray twill suit, his now-empty coffee cup lying against his soaked oxfords. “Are you ok?” a Staten Island accent asked with real concern, and Barba looked up at the sky and counted to 10 in his head before turning to the still-shirtless construction worker.

“I’m—” he started, but the man took a step closer and for the first time, Barba could see just how blue his eyes were, and completely unrelatedly, he almost pitched forward and would have fallen flat on his face were it not for a pair of strong arms that reached out to steady him.

A pair of gloriously well-muscled arms.

Belonging to the construction worker still looking at Barba with genuine concern in his unbelievably blue eyes.

“I’m fine,” Barba managed finally, after far too long a moment. “Just, uh, a little coffee-soaked. I was on my way back to my apartment anyway, so, uh, I’ll change. It’ll be fine. I’m fine. Fine and dandy.”

Good Lord, he’d give anything for those not to have been the words that just came out of his mouth.

But the construction worker just smiled at him, and Christ above, standing here sopping on a busy Manhattan street, Barba shouldn’t have melted internally at that the way he did. “Lemme walk you back to your apartment,” he suggested, his dimples deepening as he did. “Make sure that you don’t, uh, trip again.”

Barba considered refusing the offer, but frankly, with the man standing there beaming and bare-chested, he wasn’t entirely sure he remember how the English language worked. So he settled for jerking his head in an  _if you must_ fashion and stalking stiffly in the direction of his apartment building, the construction worker ambling next to him, still grinning.

“Sorry about your coffee,” the worker offered as they got into the elevator in Barba’s building. “You, uh, you seem like you could use the caffeine boost.”

He said it innocently enough, and Barba just snorted lightly and shook his head before holding out his hand to shake. “I’m Rafael Barba,” he said. “I suppose I probably should’ve introduced myself the first time I injured myself in front of you.”

The construction worker shrugged, shaking Barba’s hand with a touch that lingered a moment too long to be strictly friendly. “Probably. I mean, ‘Rafael’ is a few less syllables than ‘hot guy who walked into a telephone pole’, which is what I’ve been calling you for the past week,” he said offhandedly.

“It was a streetlight,” Barba said, his voice a half-octave higher than usual.

“Oh, right,” the construction worker said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Because that makes it better.”

Barba glared at him. “Are you going to tell me your name or am I going to have to call you ‘smart-ass construction worker who followed me home and then openly mocked me’ for the rest of eternity?”

The man had the audacity to flutter his eyelashes at Barba in what he clearly thought was a charming way (he was right, but Barba was never going to tell him that). “I mean, you can call me anything you like.” When Barba’s expression didn’t change, he chuckled and added, “But my name is Dominick Carisi, Jr. Though you can call me Sonny, everyone does.”

Barba assumed that by ‘everyone’, Carisi was referring to his parents and a few select relatives at most.

“So, Mr. Carisi,” he said, unlocking his apartment door and stepping inside before turning to face him, “thank you for the escort back to my apartment, but—”

“Are you a lawyer?” Carisi asked, something almost eager in his expression, his eyes focused on Barba’s coffee table and the stack of books Barba had been poring over the previous night, in search of precedent in the case he was working on.

Barba frowned slightly. “Yes,” he said shortly, hoping it’d be the end of the conversation.

He really should’ve known better.

Carisi’s expression lit up. “That’s awesome,” he said, still eager. “I’m, uh, I’m in law school myself. Night school, at Fordham. That’s why I’m working construction — it may be crappy work but it pays well and the hours are flexible.”

“You don’t have to defend your chosen profession to me,” Barba said mildly, hesitating before taking a step back and wordlessly inviting Carisi into his apartment.

He realized a moment too late that Carisi was still shirtless, and this was like a scene out of a bad porno.

What redeemed it was Carisi’s single minded focus on Barba’s law books as he crossed to the coffee table and picked one up, a small smile lighting his face as he scanned some of Barba’s notes scribbled in the margins. “You really know your stuff, Counselor,” he said. “Where’d you go to law school?”

“Oh, just a small school up the coast in Cambridge,” Barba said nonchalantly, taking his suit jacket off and unbuttoning his still-soaked vest.

Carisi glanced up at him, eyes wide. “Harvard?” he asked, clearly impressed, and Barba shrugged, shrugging out of his vest as he did. Carisi’s eyes tracked the movement and for a moment, Barba thought his expression looked even more appreciative than before.

But then he looked back at the book. “Do you do criminal law or civil law?”

“Criminal,” Barba said, picking up his wet clothes and moving to his bedroom so that he could actually change (though he left his door ajar so that he could still shout at Carisi). “I’m a prosecutor. So I’m afraid I won’t be able to represent you or one of your colleagues in a worker’s compensation suit anytime soon.”

Carisi laughed lightly. “Hey, give me a few more months and maybe I’ll be able to do it myself.”

Barba poked his head out of his bedroom, his expression dark. “You’re really intending on going into civil law?” he asked disapprovingly.

Though Carisi shrugged, his expression softened. “Nah. I wanted to go into law to help people. And while civil law is certainly a form of justice, I wanna do criminal law. Be a prosecutor.” Barba nodded his approval and ducked back into his bedroom, the breath catching his throat when Carisi added, “Be like you.”

“Between my apparent inability to walk in a straight line without running into something and requiring assistance getting back to my own apartment, I can certainly see why you’d be inclined to emulate me,” he said dryly.

Carisi just laughed, and Barba heard the sound of one of his law books opening again. He used Carisi’s distraction to quickly change into a clean and dry suit, complete with new tie and pocket square, all in record time. When he reappeared in the living room, Carisi looked up, blinking, an appreciative smile stretching across his face. “You look even better without a venti latte dripping from you.”

Barba rolled his eyes and looked pointedly at his watch. “While I appreciate your help, Mr. Carisi, I’m afraid that I’m going to be late to court if I don’t leave now.”

“Oh, of course,” Carisi said quickly, awkwardly shoving his hands in his pockets as he headed towards the door. “Uh, it was real nice to meet you, Raf—Mr. Barba. Try not to run into anything while I’m not around.”

“Hilarious,” Barba said dryly, locking his apartment door behind him and watching as Carisi headed for the stairs down.

He was so busy staring that he didn’t realize that he had left his briefcase in his apartment until he was almost on the elevator, and he practically jogged back to his apartment, cursing under his breath the entire time.

Of course, he wasn’t really late for court. The only thing on his schedule for the afternoon was a meeting with Buchanan that he’d been looking for an excuse to push. But the fact remained that he could ill-afford the continued distraction of a very attractive construction worker named Sonny from Staten Island who, in addition to being far too good-looking for Barba’s health, also happened to be studying law for the express purpose of ‘helping people’.

Barba had never once in his life been previously inclined to swoon.

Not until now at least.

He was so flustered that he was back in his office and halfway through the email to Buchanan that simultaneously apologized for missing their meeting while also subtly suggested where Buchanan could stick his plea deal offer before he noticed the little note tucked into his briefcase.

 _Call me sometime_ , the note read, in neat, if cramped handwriting, followed by a string of numbers and a simple sign-off of _Sonny_.

Barba sat back in his office chair and stared at the note, an involuntarily smile crossing his face.

A moment later, he sighed and shook his head, setting the note down on his desk. He had work, and cases, and plenty of things more important than wasting time thinking about a construction worker from Staten Island.

Or at least, that’s what he told himself as he tucked the note into the top drawer of his desk and resolved to forget about the entire thing.

* * *

 

For a solid week and a half, Barba was mostly successful in forgetting about Sonny Carisi, and dimples, and a well-muscled chest. Well, the latter memory made a few recurrences at night, but Barba could hardly be blamed for that.

In fact, he had done such a good job of forgetting about it that when he found himself with an unexpected afternoon free after a Grand Jury had returned an indictment in near-record time, he strolled past the construction site without even glancing over at the workers, intent instead on reading through his email on his phone.

Not that it mattered.

Somehow, Barba managed to trip over the single most minute crack ever to have surfaced on a Manhattan sidewalk, and he found himself sprawled against the concrete, staring up at the sky, completed winded. “Ow,” he managed, a moment later, blinking dazedly.

The next thing he knew, the sight of sky was replaced by Carisi standing over him, mercifully with a shirt on this time, expression torn somewhere between amusement and concern. “Ya know, Counselor, if I were a personal injury attorney I could represent you in a suit against the city for this, although I think being clumsy enough to trip over nothing would probably disqualify your case.”

He offered Barba a hand and Barba reluctantly took it, letting Carisi haul him to his feet. “Thanks,” Barba said, a little gruffly, brushing dust from his suit.

Carisi looked him up and down as if verifying he was all in one piece before asking, “Do you need glasses?”

Barba scowled at him, his dignity injured enough for one day. “Of course not,” he snapped. “Why?”

Carisi just smiled at him, his dimples creasing his cheeks in a way that shouldn’t at all be appealing to Barba, and _yet_. “Well, it’d explain why you keep tripping over thin air,” he said casually before adding, much more pointedly, “And also why you couldn’t seem to read the note I left you with my phone number.”

Barba’s mouth opened and instantly closed again, his excuse dying on his tongue as Carisi just looked at him expectantly. “Oh,” Barba managed finally. “I — I was busy.”

Needless to say, Carisi didn’t look remotely convinced. Instead, he grinned at Barba and asked, “So, Counselor, do you wanna go out with me sometime?” Barba gaped at him and Carisi just shrugged. “Figured I might as well ask you now in case you decided to fall down again. That way I don’t have to worry about you doing serious injury to yourself.”

“I should be insulted by that,” Barba spluttered, though Carisi just arched an eyebrow at him and shrugged.

“By the truth? Ok, I mean, sure, if you’re that insecure, but…” He trailed off, his grin widening when Barba’s glare turned from incredulous to murderous. “Great, so how does tonight sound?”

Barba blinked. “I — fine, I guess, but—”

“Fantastic, I’ll see you at 7.” Barba opened his mouth to reply, to retort, to offer some kind of rebuttal or anything that might even begin to get his dignity back, but Carisi just leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Tonight. 7. Can’t wait.”

“Well, you’re going to have to,” Barba shouted at his retreating back as Carisi bounded back into the construction site, well aware that it was the lamest comeback he possibly could’ve come up with, and frankly not caring, a grin beginning to spread across his face as he slowly started walking toward his apartment.

He needed to ice his knee from when he fell before it could swell and bruise spectacularly.

After all, he had a date that night.


End file.
